How to cook the ultimate mushrooms on toast

Chloe Scott tests out various different ways to make the best ever mushrooms on toast.

Spring offers the chance to get beyond the urban concrete, even if it’s just visiting parks or local woods. And if you’re out and about among nature, why not try some foraging, as St George’s and morel mushrooms peek their heads through the grass.

As forager John Wright, author of my trusty River Cottage Handbook: Mushrooms (Bloomsbury), divulges: ‘St George’s mushrooms appear with surprising reliability on or around April 23.’ You’ll find the bijou white fungi on grassland and fields but don’t go picking willy nilly, make sure you have a decent guide book.

The ultimate mushrooms on toast is a breakfast rite of passage and it’s worth testing if it’s better to use foraged mushrooms or to grab a pack of dried porcini from the supermarket.

Interestingly, Milanese author and cook Anna Venturi in Secrets From An Italian Kitchen (Pavilion, www.italiansecrets.co.uk) uses wild with cultivated, mixing 500g chestnut mushrooms with 60g dried porcini mushrooms (porcinis are also known as ceps or the charmingly named Penny Bun in Britain). The result is something with a meaty, unsludgy texture.

In Gordon Ramsay’s Great British Pub Food (Harper Collins) there’s a recipe specifically for St George’s mushrooms. Ramsay says: ‘The St George’s mushroom can take pride of place among the finest wild mushrooms, as its firm, meaty texture and distinctive woody flavour are hard to beat.’

His formula differs a little from the others, calling for granary bread and the inclusion of lemon and oregano but there are no alliums whatsoever, which concerns me as mushrooms with garlic is a sure hit.

Sam & Sam Clark in Moro: The Cookbook (Ebury Press) have a gorgeous sounding fungi recipe involving Jerez sherry). So I grab my trusty Tio Pepe fino to mingle with ‘400g wild mushrooms or the equivalent of dried or field’. I cook a small onion gently, then add garlic and the mushrooms.

The sherry and nutmeg, alongside parsley, salt and pepper, are the stars in the mix. The sherry has chutzpah, although the nutmeg’s distinct earthiness leaves a very mild lingering bitterness. Maybe it needs cream. I decide garlic, sherry and shallots are a bewitching merry-go-round of flavours.

The combination of eggs and mushrooms is a swoonily good match, their flavours cuddling amorously together.

I do wonder whether the hollandaise is going to be over the top, detracting from the intensity of the mushrooms but in fact it works with the eggs as a luxurious viscous topping. It maybe pushing it with too many frills but I’m keeping it.

Everyone toasts their bread. But there’s one game changer. Hartnett rubs her sourdough on both sides with the crushed garlic (reserving the garlic), sprinkles them with a touch of chopped thyme and olive oil and pops the bread on a griddle pan. It’s sublime. Case closed.

You can use a selection of wild mushrooms in your recipe (Picture: Alamy)

For the hollandaise:
1 egg
70g butter
Juice of half a lemon
Salt and black pepper to taste

MethodStep 1 If you’re rehydrating your wild mushrooms, place them in a bowl of hot water 30min before starting. Place the chopped onion in a mug of milk for 30min.

Step 2 Rub four slices of sourdough with 1 crushed garlic clove and drizzle each side with a little olive oil. Heat a griddle pan or frying pan on high heat and press the bread on to the pan so it toasts until charred a little for a smoky taste.

Fino sherry will add chutzpah to your recipe (Picture: supplied)

Step 3 Drain the onion from the milk. In a frying pan, heat a little more olive oil and fry the onion and remaining two garlic cloves. Once soft, add the mushrooms. Stir in the sherry and let it simmer very gently. If it starts to dry out, add 1tbsp or so of the mushroom stock left after rehydrating the dried ones or a little water. To finish, add the parsley and thyme then season with salt and pepper to taste.

Step 4 Make a cheat’s hollandaise by melting 70g butter in a saucepan then pour it quickly into a cup. Whisk the egg in the same pan off the heat. Then, whisking constantly, slowly pour the butter back into the egg mixture. Put it back on a low heat until it goes creamy but doesn’t scramble. If it starts to over-cook, remove from the heat again. Once it’s amalgamated, squeeze in the lemon and salt and pepper to taste at the end.

Step 5 Bring a large saucepan of water to the boil. Break four eggs into small cups and slip them one at a time into the boiling water.
The water must be rolling. Don’t stir it, just slip them in as gently as possible. Cook for 2-3min until the eggs are poached. Remove them with a slotted spoon.

Step 6 Place two pieces of griddled sourdough on each plate then top each slice with the mushrooms and a poached egg and drizzle over the hollandaise sauce. Garnish with black pepper. Serve.